A Well of Wandering Souls
by Noa Saito
Summary: Battle City has ended; the heroes are home relaxing when a letter arrives from Industrial Illusions. Pegasus J. Crawford has seemingly, and at long last, discovered a way to replace displaced souls into physical bodies! Is the journey worth the rewards?
1. Chapter 1

-Yugi's Bedroom

"Pegasus wants my Puzzle for _**what**_?!" little Yugi screeched as Jonouchi finished reading the letter which had just arrived with the evening mail.

The spirit of the Pharaoh, previously gazing over the boy's shoulder at the nearly concluded game of solitaire Yugi had been playing, turned a sharp eye back to the young blonde seated just beyond his host on the teen's bed. Jonouchi, of course, couldn't see this, but he suddenly had the strange feeling that he was being scrutinized by two sets of concerned violet eyes.

"That's just what it says, Yug, I'm not making any of this up!" Jonouchi said, his free hand running absently thru his unruly hair. "In his letter, Pegasus claims that he has found a way to set spirits back into physical bodies-"

"Using my Millennium Puzzle, no doubt," grumbled a remotely sore Yugi.

His yami simply stared, a determined look set on his features.

"No, listen! Pegasus only needs the Puzzle as a…wait, what does it say here? Ah, yeah, as a 'conduit of spiritual energies.' I think what he's trying to say is you can put the Pharaoh into his own body just by believin' in him and using the Puzzle as a kinda funnel, I guess…"

Yugi took this into deep consideration and tossed the idea around with the other voice inside his head. "Yami, if what Pegasus promises is true, you could have your own body for the rest of your search for the key to your past! Wouldn't that be wonderful?"

"I believe it would, Yugi, but I fear…" Yami began, but suddenly hesitated.

"Are you afraid it's another trick?" asked Yugi, an air of sweet comfort in his mental voice. "Don't worry; we foiled Pegasus's plans the last time, and I'm sure his plans can't be any better now!"

Yugi grinned, but his partner shook his head sadly.

"Hikari, I am afraid that if I do achieve a physical form that I can call my own, I will not wish to discover my past, a past which no longer would grant me a physical existence. Have not, want not, I guess…" Yami smiled, but there was no joy in it. As if to mirror the Pharaoh's feelings, Yugi's best friend slumped forward onto his elbows.

"Aw, man!" Jonouchi growled at the wall.

"What is it, Jou?" Yugi asked, pulling himself completely back into his own mind.

"Does this mean that that whole Battle City Tournament was a waste of our time? I got possessed by a freaky Egyptian for nothing?!"

"That's not what it means at all," chuckled Yugi. "One way or another, my partner's got to find out who he was and what his destiny really is. This could just be another potential aide along the way!"

But Jonouchi wasn't really listening; he was mumbling something about putting up with Kaibas and comas and mystical happenings. Yugi chuckled again, but in the back of his mind, his other soul's expression grew darker. Yugi knew that the Pharaoh would never fully trust Pegasus, but the boy hoped that this proposed adventure of Pegasus's would yield some happy results for his partner.

-Pegasus's Bedroom

"Yes, I sent the letter to little Yugi." Pegasus looked to be talking to himself. His remaining eye was half-open, foggy and dark. The young American man was quiet for a minute or so. "I am quite sure that I conveyed the possibilities and infallibility of this…" Pegasus stopped again. "I will hopefully hear from him tomorrow. Yes… Yes… I promise I will see you very soon. Good night, my dearest Cyndia."

Pegasus's vision cleared, and he replaced his eye patch over the left side of his face. Pale, tapered fingers lifted the circular Millennium Relic from his lap and placed it into its silk-lined jewelry box. Pegasus's sleep-yearning eyes lingered lovingly for just a moment on the gold-embossed name scrolled across the wooden lid as he closed Cyndia's old box and rose from his bedside armchair. Long, white hair draping gracefully into his face, the billionaire slid under his large, expensive comforter. Finally, Pegasus was able to once again fall asleep dreaming of his love with a warm smile on his face.

-Mokuba's Computer Room

"Yeah, that's what my brother's spy bugs found out!" Mokuba Kaiba was staring at, and speaking to, his beautiful new desktop computer's screen. "Noa, you'll be able to have your own body, too, just like the other Yugi and Pegasus's wife, if, of course, my brother is able to persuade Pegasus to let us use his new soul-retrieval methods…"

A pair of startling deep sea-green eyes blinked once from the computer screen.

"Thank you, Mokuba. Keep me up to date on any more information you find out, won't you?"

Mokuba nodded.

"Oh, and don't forget to thank Seto for all of the new technology he's given you to let us be together once again, even if we're not together in your reality just yet. And I still can't thank you enough, brother, for the time you spent finding me in the depths of cyberspace."

Mokuba grinned widely and bowed to his older brother. Noa nodded back and blacked out Mokuba's computer screen for him. Mokuba unplugged one of the computer's three external hard drives - the one labeled "Noa's Home," - stretched, and headed for bed.

-Outside the Game Shop Two Weeks Later

"Hikari, you're truly sure about this?" Yami asked as he put the last suitcase from the front hall into the trunk of the limousine that had been sent to pick Yugi up once his return letter, sent just four days ago, had reached Pegasus.

"Yami," Yugi replied from the back of Yami's mind, "we spent ten days discussing the possibilities and ultimate pros of this trip. This is no time to get cold feet!"

"I understand, but I'm just so worried-"

"We didn't tell any of our friends that we decided to accept Pegasus's invitation so they'll be in no danger, and Mom's home; she can take good care of Grandpa if anything here goes wrong."

"So worried that something will happen to you." Yami had stepped off for a moment of privacy into the shadows beside the building.

Yugi started. "To me?"

"Yes, to you. We have no real idea what this method of separating my spirit from the Puzzle is going to entail. If there is even the slightest possibility of you endangering yourself-"

"I'll take the chance anyway!"

The Pharaoh stopped, stunned by the boy's vehemence.

"Listen, we've been friends for two and a half years now and partners in this search for your destiny for even longer, so nothing, short of grievous bodily harm, is going to stop me from helping in any way I can."

The look in his hikari's eyes was so solid and fierce that the Pharaoh had to smile and turn away. "All right, Yugi. It seems like you've won again."

Yugi smiled back, and his consciousness resurfaced once again in control of his body.

Before he faded back into the Puzzle, his other soul gently announced, "But I refuse to go on existing in your body if your spirit's not here to co-exist with mine."

Yugi replied quietly as he slid into the back of the Industrial Illusions limo. "I promise that my spirit's not going anywhere."


	2. Chapter 2

-Pegasus's Helipad Atop His Private Island Manor

"Yugi-boy!" Pegasus nearly shouted as little Yugi stepped from the Industrial Illusions business helicopter.

Yugi smiled genially at the approaching billionaire, adjusting his suitcases in his grip. Pegasus J. Crawford strode gleefully nearer.

"I was happy to get your letter, Mister Crawford," was Yugi's timid greeting.

"Not nearly as ecstatic as I am to see you once again, my boy!" With that, Pegasus unabashedly threw his arms around the small teen, lifted him a foot off the ground, and spun Yugi in circles, suitcases and all.

When Yugi's feet again found solid ground, his eyes were spinning and his suitcases quite unbalancing. The boy collapsed comically to the ground as Pegasus continued dancing in circles. Eventually, Pegasus noticed the out-of-commission kid sprawled out on his helipad.

"Come, come! Boys, collect Master Yugi's bags and take them to his room," Pegasus commanded, extending a hand down to his floored guest. "Yugi-boy, I've got so much to show and tell you and so little time to do it in! Come!"

Crocketts, who had waited behind for his employer, finally found a moment in which to slide a logical word. "Master Pegasus, the flight from Japan is very long, so I'm sure your guest would prefer to listen to your tales over dinner."

Pegasus stopped short. "Ah, how right you are, Mister Crocketts! Yugi, I shall tell you everything over an exquisite dinner. Follow me!"

Little Yugi sighed, watching his suitcases disappear into the body of Pegasus Manor before his happy host; he could already smell the exhausting adventure ahead.

-Dining Room, Pegasus Manor

"Yugi-boy, did you enjoy your meal?" Pegasus asked, just as he had after every single course in the incredible 7-course meal he had practically had poured down his guest's throat.

"Yes, Mr. Crawford. And I am very, _very_ full now, thank you," Yugi replied drowsily.

"Please, my boy, call me 'Pegasus.' And now, perhaps, you are ready to hear my story?"

Yugi nodded to the spirit he felt hovering just beside him and turned expectantly to the head of the great dining room table. "Yes, we're listening," he answered.

"Well, I guess I should start at the very beginning. After my tournament, I was sadly bedridden."

"That reminds me! I'm sorry. I've been meaning to ask you what happened to your Millennium Eye…" Yugi asked nervously, hoping it wouldn't be too rude to inquire.

"Hmm," the American began. "My Eye was…taken," he finished hesitantly.

Yugi's brow furrowed, but Pegasus pushed on, completely determined to share his good news.

"So, because of this," Pegasus restarted, gesturing vaguely to the left side of his face, "I found myself turning my mind once again to the problem that had previously plagued me – How could I reunite myself with my beloved?

"I once again turned to technology, but technology applied this time to occult arts. I found that reversing an ultraviolet light frequency in a graveyard produces quite the frightening otherworld projector. After many more tries, I found the perfect combination of computer electronics and otherworld spirit guiding relics to be able to open up a black hole, of sorts, over an item which housed a soul. The problem, then, became retrieving the soul from the hole. I thought it thru over many months and finally created a reanimation project."

"Reanimation!?" cried the teen.

"Not in the Dr. Frankenstein way you're thinking, I assure you. Basically, what the machine does is copies the life functions of the being I'm sending into the otherworld (which is where the black hole leads) and applies it to the retrieved soul that the one who journeys into the otherworld, or the 'hunter' as I like to say, brings back with him."

"So, you're copying a body and putting another soul into the copy?" Yugi asked, trying very hard to understand this complex theory.

"Not at all. The retrieved soul returns to the body it remembers from when it was last alive. Take these hamsters, for example. Which one was retrieved from the otherworld?" asked the host as Crocketts handed a cage filled with squeaking rodents down to him.

Yugi slid the cage in front of himself and studied each hamster thru the wires of the cushy cage. "I can't tell the difference between them!"

"You're more than welcome to hold them," offered his host.

Yugi unlatched the cage and gently scooped up two small beasts that had not yet reached their adult years. "They both look completely fine and totally real to me."

Pegasus smiled. "Both of those hamsters were retrieved from the otherworld when they were just two weeks old."

"What!?" Yugi jumped, almost dropping both hamsters he held. "No way! They grew up?"

"Yes. Their development has been completely normal, except for the part when they died just two weeks after birth." Pegasus stood and reached into the cage himself, pulling out the oldest and widest rodent. "This is their mother. She is the one who retrieved the souls of her four departed children."

"Wow…" Yugi liked what he was seeing. "How does the soul retrieving work exactly?"

Pegasus replaced the elderly hamster and the cage latch. "Well, that I can not truly tell you."

"Why? Is it a secret?" Yugi teased.

"I can not tell because I simply have not been to the otherworld before."

"Oh," was all Yugi could think to say. He had hoped he would not be jumping blind into another crazy Shadow Realm adventure, but that seemed like just what this was shaping up to be.

"What I can tell you about soul retrieving, though, is still helpful, I believe. The journey will remove the hunter completely from his consciousness, and, once the hunter has retrieved the soul or souls he was sent to find, the hunter returns unharmed to his own mind. The actual recovery of the lost soul seems to be will-based. See, in the case of this mother hamster and her four children, one immediately recognized her, and its body started to form very soon after the mother was sent into the otherworld. The other three, apparently, needed some persuading, because, as far as I have found, lost or displaced souls are often completely ambivalent to the living."

"Another huge plus for this mission." Yugi was suddenly very tired.

"As you've seen, though, soul replacement can be done! And hamsters were a perfect choice for the initial experiment. In order to get a soul interested in living again, great emotion sometimes needs to be accessed, and hamsters, as animals go, are actually quite emotional creatures."

Yugi dropped the two hamsters back into their cage, sighed, and leaned back in his chair. "I just don't know about this. Yami, why don't you take over?"

The boy's round eyes closed gently. Sharp, angular eyes blinked back open.

"What's the catch, Pegasus?" the Pharaoh asked in a no-nonsense, no-jokes voice.

"The catch, Pharaoh-boy, is that if your soul fails to return with little Yugi's on his first attempt to retrieve you, there will be no trying again. I will have sent you to an otherworld that you can not escape from. And that means no discovering your past life."

The Pharaoh simply sat and stared hard at the American man for a number of minutes. Pegasus watched the hamsters clambering noisily over one another in their cage.

Finally, the Pharaoh stood abruptly. "You'll have our decision in the morning." He started for the door behind Pegasus which led to the hallways beyond.

"Pharaoh, please remember that your decision affects more people than simply yourself."

"I'm well aware that my decision affects you," the ancient soul snapped.

"No," the billionaire began, rising and turning to look directly into the ancient king's eyes. "I will do this with or without you, but please consider the strain of unlocking and protecting a Millennium Item on your young host." Pegasus looked steadily at the young man for a moment before inclining his head gracefully and whispering, "Good night, Pharaoh." The mysterious and brilliant man then started to hum, sliding silently into the hallways of his expansive manor.


End file.
